Systems and methods for monitoring employee performance in the workplace are well known and widely practiced. Perhaps the oldest and simplest example is a unilateral and largely subjective review of an employee by one or more of his or her superiors. A more objective system is a so-called 360° employee performance review system. A 360° employee review system is a multi-perspective data collection process that can apply to both developmental feedback and performance review feedback data collection. Multi-perspective data collection may be defined as assessments collected from various sources such as one's superiors, peers, subordinates, clients and an individuals own perspective on his or her skills, accomplishments and other job-related behavior and activities. Although not limited thereto, 360° employee review systems are particularly well-suited to evaluation of service sector employees heavily involved in client/customer interaction such as financial advisors, brokers, bankers, lawyers, and so on. A 360° employee review system is considered to be more accurate and less biased than simple review of an employee by one or more managers.
Until recently, however, conventional 360° employee reviews were conducted as paper-based review processes or as hybrid paper-electronic processes. For instance, a typical 360° employee review data collection process might include data obtained from questions presented via paper surveys questionnaires, surveys stored on computer disk, or verbal and/or e-mail exchanges between the reviewer and reviewee. Because of the numerous people that might be involved in 360° employee evaluation, and also because of non-uniformities and redundancies in the data collection process, the review process was onerous, took a long time to complete and the rate of compliance by participants in the system was less than desirable.
Moreover, because of perceived or actual inequalities in the data collection process, e.g., possible collusion between certain reviewees and reviewers or certain verbal, electronic mail or voice mail statements made via during data collection, many reviewees viewed 360° employee review processes with skepticism and considered them to be unfair and even corrupt. These perceptions, whether or not validated, could expose the employer to claims of employment discrimination or other litigation.
In addition, it is commonplace in typical 360° employee review programs for employees to be asked to conduct “direct reports” performance evaluations, i.e., evaluations of their manager. Unless an employee's comments about his or her manager are held in strict confidence, such comments may not be as candid as they could be in order to provide an accurate assessment of the manager's job performance.
Examples of improvements over conventional 360° employee review systems are the 360° Feedback® process marketed by TEAMS International of Tempe, Ariz. and the Visual 360® process marketed by MindSolve Technologies, Inc. of Gainesvillle, Fla. The 360° Feedback® and Visual 360® processes are available in fully automated forms as client-server applications operable on a corporate intranet or via the Internet. The processes are implemented by software that includes interactive and confidential employee performance and development surveys. To reduce the likelihood of “gaming” the system, i.e., collusion between reviewers and reviewees, the 360° Feedback® and Visual 360® processes require supervisor approval or denial of the reviewers an employee may select to review his or her performance. Additionally, the Web-based 360° Feedback® and Visual 360® processes provide online summaries of employee performance, and the Web-based 360° Feedback® service generates preprogrammed or customized action plans to support the future professional development of reviewees.
Although the 360° Feedback® and Visual 360® processes possess several advantages over conventional 360° employee review programs in terms of ease of use, uniformity, participant compliance, confidentiality and actual and perceived fairness, they do not permit a participant to select persons whose employment performance he or she desires to review but is not obligated to review. Obligatory reviews are those conducted by managers of employees over which they have direct supervision. As a consequence, the 360° Feedback® and Visual 360® processes do not permit individuals who may have substantial knowledge of a person's employment performance, e.g., colleagues from within and outside of a person's employment department, from providing input that may be useful in evaluating that person.
Furthermore, the 360° Feedback® and Visual 360® software is designed for gathering large volumes of employee performance data and providing an enterprise with comprehensive employee performance information and action plans. That is, the scope of their coverage and the demands they place on participants are such that practical implementation of such programs are limited to very infrequent, e.g., yearly, surveys. Accordingly, they do not permit managers or mentors to receive interim feedback and generate interim action plans that could be used to constructively modify an employee's habits or behavior before they become serious problems that otherwise might not be discovered until the employee's yearly annual performance evaluation.
Additionally, the 360° Feedback® and Visual 360® systems in their corporate intranet and Web-based applications require a user to be online and connected to either the corporate intranet or the World Wide Web in order to interact with and participate in the employee performance surveys. They do not allow a user to participant to interact with the systems offline which in turn limits the flexibility of the systems and, to a certain extent, the survey response/compliance rate.
An advantage exists, therefore, for a fully automated 360° employee review system that is suitable for corporate intranet or Web-based applications that permits a participant to select persons whose employment performance he or she desires to review but is not obligated to review.
A further advantage exists for a fully automated 360° employee review system that permits managers or mentors to receive interim employee performance feedback and generate interim employee action plans between annual performance evaluations.
A further advantage exists for a fully automated 360° employee review system that is suitable for corporate intranet or Web-based applications and yet permits a user to download the application and participate in the system's employee performance surveys while offline and disconnected from the corporate intranet or the World Wide Web.